yes, well, i still enjoy an old disney cartoon. not only they’re sooo fun to watch, they are also violence-free, sex-free, and any_other_stuff-free. i mean, nowadays a cartoon is no fun unless it has monsters and robots and killing – they have no message, nothing to teach (could anyone compare them to tom & jerry??).
however, this is exactly why disney sounds so appealing to me. needless to say i really fancy the plot, but recently i’ve been paying more attention to the songs – they are somehow a summarise of the characters’ personalities. the one i chose for this piece of writing is <<beauty and the beast>>. from the very beginning we hear the “little town song” – it’s both about the villagers and belle. while heading to the town, belle actually calls them little people, noticing how every day is like the one before. it didn’t really surprise me the similarities between their way of thinking and the one of people i know – they find belle strange, but only because she’s “nothing like the rest of us”. how come that it’s so easy to spot the odd one out, yet so difficult to see that perhaps it’s differences that makes someone greater than others. it’s rather considered “a pity and a sin, that she doesn’t fit in”. and while gaston – the ’91 bad-boy – plans to marry belle, she is in search for “so much more than they’ve got planned”. who’d have ever thought that a cartoon can be so deep-thinking?
furthermore,other songs are just as thought-provoking as the first one. “tale as old as time”, between romantic and plot-related lines offers a real guide line, let’s say: “bitter sweet and strange finding you can change, learning you were wrong”. also, the funny “be our guest” shows a great deal of imagination, mixing “pies and pudding on flambe” with the flatware that’s “entertaining”, and with the necessary by now piece of morality – “ah, those good old days when we were useful […] ten years we’ve been rusting […] needing exercise, a chance to use our skills”.
seems that back then it was seen as normally to teach children some moral values together with giving them a reason to laugh. why has this changed? i will continue in follow-up posts with more disney quotes.
simplicate 